16. The Pilgrim Fathers. 303
deeply rooted of papal errors. While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome, they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness in which, through the long ages of her rule, popery had enveloped all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly dissipated. Said one of the leading ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay:“ It was toleration that made the world antichristian; and the church never took harm by the punishment of heretics.” 439 The regulation was adopted by the colonists, that only church-members should have a voice in the civil government. A kind of state church was formed, all the people being required to contribute to the support of the clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before these measures led to the inevitable result— persecution.
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but unlike them, he saw— what so few in his time had yet seen— that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God ' s word had yet been received. Williams“ was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.” 440 He declared it to be [ 294 ] the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience.“ The public or the magistrates may decide,” he said,“ what is due from man to man; but when they attempt to prescribe a man ' s duties to God, they are out of place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs to-day and another to-morrow; as has been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman
439 Idem, p. 335. 440 Bancroft, Part I, ch. 15, par. 16.